15/06/2009 by Brigid.

The alarm clock went off at 4.30am but, truthfully, we had both been semi-conscious since 3.30am. Though it was still dark, we could see that it had rained overnight. Even at this hour, there was activity in the car park as participants dried off their bikes and stowed their belongings. The promised hot breakfast consisted of hard boiled eggs, coffee, waffles and toast. I couldn’t complain that it wasn’t “hot”, but I am more of an eggs and bacon type.

At 6.30am sharp, George put on his helmet and tooted his horn and the 15^th Annual Mother Road Ride/Rally was under way: George’s first as Rally Master. This year we had a police escort to ensure that we all made it through the first set of traffic lights and on to the Interstate.

We rode with the group into Chicago for a wet photo opportunity on West Adams, now officially recognised as the start of Route 66, and stuck with them all until Wilmington. This year’s group seems enormous, compared with past years. Doug and Joanne caught us up at the Launching Pad Drive-Inn, so we let the others go ahead and trailed along a few minutes behind. Somewhere outside Gardner, we noticed we had picked up a tail. It was only mid-morning, but Jim had broken down in Chicago, found a Harley dealer 50 miles south of the city, had his bike fixed, and still managed to catch up. He stuck with us as we visited the old Sinclair filling station at Odell, Funks Grove (where I bought a little bottle maple “sirup”), and the Route 66 Museum in Pontiac, then rejoined the main group after lunch.

We temporarily abandoned the itinerary to see the Lincoln memorial in Springfield, where we rubbed the great man’s nose.  (It’s good luck, apparently.) Then we stopped again outside Chatham to ride an old section of brick road that George had added for the first time this year. After that, we hit the Interstate for the next 80 or so miles for an extremely rare opportunity to ride across the original Chain of Rocks Bridge that spans the Mississippi. There were about 80 of us, and it was quite a sight – especially for the pedestrians who thought that the bridge was closed to traffic, as we weaved around the permanent picnic tables and reproduction vintage fire truck!

Our overnight stop was unspectacular. There is nothing whatever to recommend the Red Roof Inn in St. Charles. In 2006, we opened the door to our room to find an unmade bed … This year we couldn’t open the door at all. We had to wait an age in the hot sun before the unfortunate duty manager was able to fix the lock. Even then, the bathroom was so small that you had to raise the loo seat in order to shut the door, and the alarm clock (conveniently pre-set to 6am) seemed to have no “off” switch.

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15/06/2009 by Brigid.

We were due to leave for Chicago between 9am and 10am. I set the alarm for 7am, but couldn’t sleep that long. I could already hear Doug and Joanne moving around, so I took the opportunity of calling the hospital and managed, at last, to speak to my mother. It has to be said, she did sound a bit wobbly, but seemed in good spirits and generally pleased to hear from me. So the trip is still on … for the moment. Assuming no change, we’ll do Route 66, and reassess the situation when we get to Santa Monica.

Otherwise, John and I spent the next couple of hours repacking and redistributing our luggage, losing stuff, finding stuff that we meant to pack, and generally faffing about. We grabbed a quick breakfast downtown and called into Verizon with a borrowed mobile phone to equip ourselves with a US cell number. Then it was time to hit the road. We aimed to be at Willowbrook around 4pm, and we were, despite some necessary running repairs to John’s CB antenna.

The car park at the La Quinta motel was three-quarters full of bikes. Familiar faces greeted us, and it felt like we had never been away. Unloading the bikes took an age as we fell into conversation with old friends and new. At last, we found ourselves more or less alone and realised, although we had lost an hour since Michigan, it was time to eat.

Del Rhea’s was packed. There was standing room only as we waited for a table. So we had a couple of pints of Route 66 Red and chatted with other late-comers including Fred and Mary, Joe, and Mark and Gina (none of whom are riding this year), and a bemused New Zealand couple, Brian and Barbara, who came in place of Cameron and Ngaire. With no hope of a table any time soon, Geoff Wilde suggested we eat in the adjoining dining room. A sensible enough idea: it was a bigger room and there was no shortage of vacant tables. But we were immediately shoo’ed away by a particularly officious manager, who clearly didn’t want biker riff-raff mixing with ‘quality’. However, not wishing to turn away a table of seven, he reluctantly gave in.

Dinner was rather unsatisfactory all round. We missed George’s first briefing as Rally Master, and the waitress somehow mistook my pronounciation of chicken in a basket as sautéed chicken livers. Still, we had a good laugh about previous years, as Joe did his best to scare the newbies with hilarious tales about these two equally green Brits who showed up in 2001. That was, until I reminded him that his own antics that year had given rise to the “Wally Award” …

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15/06/2009 by Brigid.

Well, I couldn’t speak to Mum this morning after all. She is out of intensive care, but couldn’t come to the phone and her bedside phone had not yet been connected. Otherwise, the news continued to be encouraging. The nurse reassured me that Mum was doing “very well”, so I passed on our love and said I would call again tomorrow.

We put a load of washing on and went out for breakfast. Joanne is now officially on holiday, but woke up feeling under the weather with some sort of infection. Not wanting to disturb her, we then borrowed Doug’s suburban and went shopping in nearby Flint.

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